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Understanding Resource Manager disk quotas

Understanding Resource Manager disk quotas

When you’re working with Windows Server 2012 R2, Resource Manager disk quotas are another tool you can use to manage disk usage. You can configure Resource Manager disk quotas on a per-volume or per-folder basis. You can set disk quotas with a specific hard limit — meaning a limit can’t be exceeded — or a soft limit, meaning a limit can be exceeded.

Generally, you should use hard limits when you want to prevent users from exceeding a specific disk-usage limitation. Use soft limits when you want to monitor usage and simply warn users who exceed or are about to exceed usage guidelines. All quotas have a quota path, which designates the base file path on the volume or folder to which the quota is applied. The quota applies to the designated volume or folder and all subfolders of the designated volume or folder. The particulars of how quotas work and how users are limited or warned are derived from a source template that defines the quota properties.

Windows Server 2012 R2 includes the quota templates listed in Table 4–6. By using the File Server Resource Manager, you can easily define additional templates that would then be available whenever you define quotas, or you can set single-use custom quota properties when defining a quota.

Quota templates or custom properties define the following:

? Limit The disk space usage limit

? Quota type Hard or soft

? Notification thresholds The types of notification that occur when usage reaches a specific percentage of the limit

Although each quota has a specific limit and type, you can define multiple notification thresholds as either a warning threshold or a limit threshold. Warning thresholds are considered to be any percentage of the limit that is less than 100 percent. Limit thresholds occur when the limit reached is 100 percent. For example, you could define warning thresholds that are triggered at 85 percent and 95 percent of the limit and a limit threshold that is triggered when 100 percent of the limit is reached.

Users who are approaching or have exceeded a limit can be automatically notified by email. The notification system also allows for notifying administrators by email, triggering incident reporting, running commands, and logging related events.

TABLE 4–6 Disk quota templates

QUOTA TEMPLATE

LIMIT

QUOTA TYPE

DESCRIPTION

100 MB Limit

100 MB

Hard

Sends warnings to users as the limit is approached and exceeded

200 MB Limit Reports To User

200 MB

Hard

Sends storage reports to the users who exceed the threshold

200 MB Limit With 50 MB Extension

200 MB

Hard

Uses the DIRQUOTA command to grant an automatic, one-time, 50-MB extension to users who exceed the quota limit

250 MB Extended Limit

250 MB

Hard

Meant to be used by those whose limit has been extended from 200 MB to 250 MB

Monitor 200 GB Volume Usage

200 MB

Soft

Monitors volume usage, and warns when the limit is approached and exceeded

Monitor 500 MB Share

500 MB

Soft

Monitors share usage, and warns when the limit is approached and exceeded